Atlas Shrugged is not a LibriVox recording, but a Blackstone Audio commercial recording. The book is still in copyright and unavailable for LibriVox to record.

This version of War and Peace was an early LibriVox recording, made in 2007. If you prefer a single voice, there is currently a solo recording being made of a different translation of this great work. Both the collaborative and solo recordings may be found in the LibriVox catalogue here, where you will also see that all volumes of the collaborative version are grouped together.

Regarding the grading of readers, we do not do this, for the simple reason that readers would be deterred from recording by negative feedback. All readers improve through practice and experience. We hope you will appreciate this more when you start recording yourself.

I was just listening to Atlas Shrugged which is a Librivox recording and a very long book. I think its just 60 pages shy of War and Peace. It was read entirely by Christopher Hurt. Chapters 15 - 17 (War and Peace) are read by a woman with the worst "motherese" baby talk I've ever heard. She refuses to use contractions of any words and exaggerates syllables to the point of self parody. The following reader (chapter 18) is a British woman who sounds like she is on a life support system slurring words as she clings to dear life. I'm disappointed that such a great book is given this treatment while Atlas Shrugged is read coherently (given the insanity of Atlas Shrugged). I'm enjoying War and Peace and of course I am thankful that people have donated their time. As an earlier reviewer noted, I also find it annoying when a reader tries to act too much. Maybe Librivox has a system of grading readers so they receive feedback? I am at chapter 18 in the first book and will most likely listen to the whole book, but I wish there was one reader per book at least or just one reader for the whole work. To further "look the gift horse in the mouth" I wish IA would arrange these books in groups instead of having to go searching for the books one by one. I just bought a condenser mic and will be reading for Librivox soon, if they accept me. I think its a wonderful group and have enjoyed what I have listened to so far.

When I first discovered librivox and Internet archive I was overly critical. But having a conscience and little money, I am grateful for librivox and IA. There is one thing which is advantageous to a collaborative; it is that you will not become stuck with a recording quality or voice that one does not subjectively care for the whole volume or book.

There is a part "Volume 1" version which includes probably books one and two, and perhaps the first part of book 3. It is a solo voice of, in my opinion, is a fine reader Mary Ann Spiegel. It is peppered with many French phrases and sentences, not translated into english.

This war and peace translation, Book 1, is almost totally in English, for we mere "earthlings". :-)

Goodness. I can't imagine reading War and Peace as a solo project. The general rule of thumb is that it takes 3-4 hours work to produce one hour of recorded audio, depending on the complexity of the voicing and the difficulty of the text you are reading.

Without group readings, projects like this would never get off the ground. In my view, it is better to have a group recording with all its faults and foibles than no recording at all.

Many of the novels and other full-length books at LibriVox are read as "group projects", and it is our practice not to refuse anyone who wants to read. Personally, I've found most of the group efforts I've heard to be at least acceptable, if not outstanding (like a group recording of Marcus Aurelius' _Meditations_ that I enjoyed very much).

Nevertheless, if you're unhappy with the way this book was recorded, you can either volunteer to re-record it yourself as a solo work, or you can contribute re-recorded versions of chapters that you're unhappy with. At LibriVox, we're very much about "choice of voice". All that's required are a microphone and signing up at the forum.

Also note that with newer versions, we try to standardize the volume levels. Older works may occasionally be recorded at low levels, and this is equally a problem for solo recordings (like Carl Manchester's otherwise superb recording of Bakunin's _God and the State_).

Unfortunately, multiple people have contributed to reading this novel and there are problems with this for me. First, there is not enough attention being given by some to the recording level so some of their uploads are so low, my iPod is not able to reproduce the audio at an acceptable level. The bigger issue is that some of these well meaning folks have heavy accents, or pause too much, or try acting a bit too much, and I'm having trouble concentrating on the content. I'm sure this format would work fine if any one of these people would read the whole Novel, talented as they all are, but because you have so many different readers (one for EACH CHAPTER before I had to give it up) there's something missing. Sorry for the bad review, but this was my experience. I had to stop near the end of the first book. I must say that my other Librivox/Archive.org audio books have been outstanding.